Collaborative governance is an emerging form of governance, based on Direct democracy, supported by Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). It enables any interested individual to collaborate in the creation/modication/deletion of policies and laws of a community. The name of this concept is a rebrand of the computing-specific term Open source governance.

Contents

Openess

Collaborative governance is broadly inspired by the Free and Open source software (FOSS), which —through the availability of its source code— liberally grants to the users the right to study and change its design. Because of this, FOSS tends to improve and evolve extremely rapidly. Open content movement, a generalization of FOSS initiatives for every type of creative work, is an inspirer as well.

In an collaborative governanced-community, there exist direct participation of all the governed on every aspect of its government, making it really open. Then the community may benefit as FOSS users do, translated into democratic policies and up-to-date laws.

Use of technology

Because so much information must be gathered for the overall decision-making process to succeed, however, technology may provide important forces leading to the type of empowerment needed for participation in this kind of government, especially those technological tools that enable community narratives and correspond to the accretion of knowledge.

Not only voting

Features

It servers from modern concepts, that make Direct Democracy broader and slight different.

Practical

Continious

Participation is intended to be an every-day action,

Voluntary

Open source governance does not demand that every person participate in every decision. It simply allows people to participate as much or as little as they please in any decision in any community. It is thus expected that people will tend to channel themselves into specific areas of expertise and into specific communities. They will not be restricted to those areas, but they will have the opportunity to become "leaders" in those fields simply by their reputation
Open